Peace and Justice Post

The entire Libyan conflict of the last month — the civil war in Libya, the US-led military action against Gathafi — is neither about humanitarian intervention nor about the immediate supply of world oil. It is in fact one big distraction — a deliberate distraction — from the principal political struggle in the Arab world. There is one thing on which Gathafi and Western leaders of all political views are in total accord. They all want to slow down, channel, co-opt, limit the second Arab revolt and prevent it from changing the basic political realities of the Arab world and its role in the geopolitics of the world-system.

To appreciate this, one has to follow what has been happening in chronological sequence. Although political rumblings in the various Arab states and the attempts by various outside forces to support one or another element within various states have been a constant for a long time, the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi on Dec. 17, 2010 launched a very different process.

It was in my view the continuation of the spirit of the world revolution of 1968. In 1968, as in the last few months in the Arab world, the group that had the courage and the will to launch the protest against instituted authority were young people. They were motivated by many things: the arbitrariness and cruelty and corruption of those in authority, their own worsening economic situation, and above all the insistence on their moral and political right to be a major part of determining their own political and cultural destiny. They have also been protesting against the whole structure of the world-system and the ways in which their leaders have been subordinated to the pressures of outside forces.

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